Nestl USA Finds the AAP Help It Needs

When the Department of Labor conducts an on-site affirmative action plan audit, it can take as long as six weeks, tying up valuable time for employees, supervisors, and executives, slowing productivity, and creating travel expenses for HR personnel responsible for overseeing the audit.

Nestlé USA, in Glendale, California, has found an affirmative action plan documentation system that, so far, has eliminated the need for on-site audits. "We've had four compliance audits this year, and every one has been settled at the desk audit stage," according to Donna Marshall, manager of Employment Law Administrative Programs for Nestlé. The reason, she says, is Yocom & McKee's Complete AAP software.

Yocom & McKee's founders are employment law attorneys, so they understand the issues that an effective affirmative-action plan must address. "To have a software package that's so complete that the Department of Labor will close out [an audit] at the desk stage is wonderful," Marshall says. "The Complete AAP program really is complete, and is very understandable." In fact, it's the same package that Yocom & McKee uses to prepare plans for clients throughout the nation.

With Yocom & McKee's Complete AAP, HR personnel can create a complete affirmative-action plan to comply with the latest federal regulations. The newest release, version 8, fully automates the biannual equal-opportunity survey report. It adds a compensation analysis feature for the Dubray mean and median analysis, a comprehensive salary-regression analysis, a line-of-progression report, and an audit feature. Just as important, the Complete AAP correctly documents employees who report to off-site managers and those who were hired at one facility but work at another.

One of the most significant advantages of Yocom & McKee's program is the ability to download data from the human resources information system into the Complete AAP, Marshall says. "When we download race and gender data into the AAP, all of that information is populated with job titles and salary," she explains, so salary-regression analyses are automated. "That saves an immense amount of time."

The Complete AAP also runs internal workforce analyses -- a departmental listing of employees from lowest-paid to the "report to" person. Theoretically, a compliance officer could look at that analysis and see how an employee could move through the ranks, Marshall adds. Naturally, reports are printed in the format required by the Department of Labor.

Nestlé adopted the Yocom & McKee Complete AAP about 10 years ago, starting with one facility. Now, every facility that needs an AAP -- about 45 facilities -- uses the Yocom & McKee software. "If I had it to do over again," Marshall says, "I'd have required all Nestlé facilities to use Complete AAP years ago."

To ensure that each HR administrator who develops affirmative-action plans is well-versed in the Complete AAP, Marshall encouraged them to participate in training classes at Yocom & McKee. They left the two-day workshops with hands-on experience and a well-documented notebook, Marshall says. Because of staff turnovers, she adds, "I've set up three more training classes just for Nestlé, with one-on-one training as a follow-up.

"There haven't been any surprises with Yocom & McKee, except that they thought of things that were on people's wish lists," Marshall exclaims. How percipient!